Bilingual and Spanish books Archives - Multicultural Children's Book Day

{Guest post by Language Lizard}

The Language Lizard team is very excited to announce the release of a new series of children’s books in many languages that Celebrates Diversity, Kindness, and Friendship!

Language Lizard Living in Harmony Books use colorful multicultural illustrations and simple text to explain concepts of diversity, kindness, and friendship. The books come with free multicultural lessons and activities to support diversity education.

The Language Lizard Living in Harmony Book Series consists of three titles:

Be Kind by Livia Lemgruber shows many ways to help others with simple acts of kindness.

We Can All Be Friends by Michelle Griffis shows how much we have in common even though we are all different.

Who Are We? by Anneke Forzani, illustrated by Maria Russo helps us to understand and appreciate the diversity in our community.

Language Lizard Living in Harmony Books are currently available in English and in bilingual editions with the following languages:

Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, Chinese (with Pinyin), German, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Telugu, and Vietnamese.

(More languages will be coming soon.)

All books include access to free multicultural lesson plans and activities, as well as English audio of the book.

Praise for Language Lizard Living in Harmony Book Series:

“The Living in Harmony series of books teaches kids to embrace diversity and act kindly toward others. With its central theme that we all have more similarities than differences, this deceptively simple and endearing series is a valuable resource to cultivate compassion in our children.” ~Zeynep Erdil-Moody, Ph.D. , Language Acquisition Specialist

“Beautifully illustrated and strategically organized to honor and leverage linguistic and cultural diversity via representation and inclusion. True ‘windows and mirrors’ books that promote unity amongst diversity!” ~Kelly Aldinger, ESL Teacher

“The Living in Harmony books captivate the essence of American diversity. The book’s beautifully crafted illustrations represent the faces of ALL my students and the simple words teach powerful lessons of kindness, acceptance, understanding, and friendship. Teachers looking to introduce diverse texts for young readers in their classroom libraries, look no further!” ~Nikolette Trofa, 4th Grade Teacher

About Us

Language Lizard, LLC (www.LanguageLizard.com) is a leading supplier of bilingual products in over 50 languages. The company provides award-winning bilingual books and audio resources to schools, libraries, literacy organizations, and bilingual families. Language Lizard offers culturally responsive teaching materials, multilingual posters, and free multicultural lesson plans to support diverse classrooms and homeschooling families.

Language Lizard Living in Harmony Books are available as English and bilingual paperbacks at www.LanguageLizard.com, Ingram, and bookstores worldwide.

Be Kind by Livia Lemgruber

We Can All Be Friends by Michelle Griffis

Who Are We? by Anneke Forzani, illustrated by Maria Russo

Bilingual editions currently available in Amharic, Arabic, Burmese, Chinese (with Pinyin), German, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Telugu, and Vietnamese.

Read Your World!

Guest post by Izzie Chea

From humble beginnings in the busy kitchen of an Oakland, CA home in 2016, the idea of bringing children’s Spanish and bilingual books was coming to fruition. Maceo Cabrera-Estévez, Cuban-American mom and book lady for Barefoot Books, noticed the demand for high quality, authentic, and representative Spanish and bilingual children’s literature. There was nowhere to go that would guarantee that bilingual and Spanish books were not just poor translations of English books, and so Booklandia was born.

Booklandia provides Bilingual and Spanish literature to children, ages infant to age 12, through an online store (tienda), a subscription box, or through book sets for teachers, schools, libraries, and organizations like hospitals and community centers. Booklandia also has a donation program giving families and organizations books for every box sold.

Our mission at Booklandia is to assist in creating beautiful, representative, and inclusive home libraries for children. Books from Booklandia are sourced from across Latin America, South America, México, the Caribbean, Spain, and the US and include a diverse representation of characters, stories, themes, and authors.

Part of Booklandia is the commitment to building community, and as a result, Booklandia has a presence at many festivals and events in the SF Bay Area as well as regular free bilingual storytime events in California and Texas. The success of these events is shown in the smiling faces of children when they see books and characters with similar names and features as theirs.

As a current challenge to keep building community, the #LEEMOS3000 Reading Challenge is live throughout the month of March. Readers of all ages and levels are encouraged to log hours all month long and contribute to the collective goal of 3000 hours reading bilingual and Spanish books.

To learn more about Booklandia, please visit www.booklandiabox.com!

To join our #LEEMOS3000 Challenge, please visit https://booklandiabox.com/blogs/news/leemos3000-challenge!

Izzie Chea is Marketing Director at Booklandia. She is a Dominican/Mexican-American writer, storyteller, music teacher, mother, and wife. She resides in ultra-diverse Houston, TX, and enjoys reading with a cafecito, her piano, and the family cat, Simon.